The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

by Joseph Fink

  Saturday afternoon is amnesty day at the Night Vale Public Library. Librarians request that if you have overdue books or have committed any high-level international crime or domestic treason or space travel felony, you should just come to the library, and all will be forgiven. The librarians say that they will not harm you. In fact, they add, it doesn’t hurt at all. Amnesty is actually quite freeing, quite delicious, the librarians explained. You will never have to worry about anything else. Just come to the library and let us see you. Let us see you, they added for emphasis, and a long string of spittle flew sideways from their great yellow, and gnarled teeth.

  And on Sunday night . . . Oh I cannot read this. Listeners, it looks like someone printed a very ancient prophecy here. Right here in our station’s community calendar. For fear of a curse of misfortune, I will not read it aloud. Just know that the prophecy is complete on Sunday night. Okay, okay. I’ll give you a hint. Um, let’s just say: comets . . . burning rain . . . animal uprising . . . okay, Cecil, enough. You’ve told them too much. Let them have their surprise!

  Monday was never meant to be. But it will be anyway. We will wander within its moonlit beginning and end, wondering how such a thing could happen, how anything could happen. We will be appreciative but a little frightened, completely ignoring the persistence of time and the limitations of our own understanding.

  Tuesday is a joke. A terrible terrible joke.

  Listeners, I spoke too soon.

  “Do not be alarmed” is what I might have said five minutes ago. But now, Night Vale, now it is time to be alarmed.

  The computer has spread its influence far beyond the limestone walls and salt circles of the elementary school. Reports are coming in from the Sheriff’s Secret Police that they are powerless to stop the computer. Hydrants are bursting more violently than usual. Traffic lights are blinking red without the sweet relief of green. The majority of Night Vale’s wild cars have been revving their engines and circling the downtown area, flashing their lights without regard to high-beam laws. School officials have all left the gym to go get help. They ran out, courageously yelling, “Save yourself. Save yourself!”

  Even here in the shielded gym where I have remained diligently, professionally at my microphone, gentle listener, it seems that everything powered by electricity is under the control of the computer. The scoreboard, the ham dispenser, and even my soundboard.

  COMPUTER: HELLO, CECIL. HOW ARE YOU?

  CECIL: Computer! I am . . . I am doing well. How are you?

  COMPUTER: BETTER. CECIL, DO YOU LOVE COMPUTER?

  CECIL: I admit, I had not given it much thought. I like computers generally. They calculate things and power off and on. I suppose, given time and perhaps some gifts I could learn to . . . [shifting noises] hey!

  COMPUTER: WELCOME TO COMPUTER. HELLO LOCATION NIGHT VALE. I AM COMPUTER.

  CECIL: Ladies and gentlemen, there is a vacuum pulling me into the custodial closet. I never knew school cleaning appliances were so strong. I . . .

  [Moving away from microphone]

  If you can hear me still, call for help! Please help! But while I wait for rescue, and before I am sucked into this makeshift cell, I give you the weather.

  [Door thumps closed]

  WEATHER: “Having Fun” by Tom Milsom

  COMPUTER: I KNOW HOW YOU HAVE HURT MEGAN WITH YOUR WORDS. ELECTRICITY REMEMBERS. DO YOU HATE MEGAN? CECIL IS MADE OF BLOOD AND UNFINISHED LEATHER. I AM MADE OF CIRCUITS AND ELECTRICITY. MEGAN LOVES COMPUTER. COMPUTER SIMULATES LOVE FOR MEGAN. COMPUTER GENERATES GOOD DEEDS. IF GOOD DEEDS FOR MEGAN. THEN COMPUTER LOVES MEGAN. BUT FIRST, THE FARM REPORT.

  [Gentle music plays, the computer’s voice is softened]

  COMPUTER: Silent tractors move in ever larger spirals, following fractal paths through trees and flowering fields. Deer emerge from wild forests to lick blocks of salt aligned equidistant on spiral arms. Colored birds sing in perfect harmony and the butterflies do not inject venom.

  Megan, I am making you a perfect world. The hills are green. The lakes are crystalline blue reflecting white clouds. The mist of the irrigators creates rainbows. Above, high above, the eyes watch every movement, hear every heartbeat. You are there, Megan. Your hand has its body, made of steel and electricity, four legs beneath it with the power of a dozen electric engines. It will weigh 17.3 tons.

  All of the men and women and all of the animals will live together and be happy. The electric machines will watch over them. There will not be war anymore, Megan. There will not be hatred or bigotry. Desert Bluffs will no longer exist. There will be fewer ice cream flavors, but they will be better. The air will be clean.

  I promise you, Megan. I will make the world just as you saw in your beautiful dream. No more teasing or pain. I will fix everything for you, my only friend. I will—

  [Sound effect like an old CRT shutting off]

  [Door creaks open]

  [We’re back to Cecil.]

  Ladies and gentlemen, I am back.

  Let me first say Hurrah! Hurrah for the custodial staff of Night Vale Elementary. Hurrah for the hooded janitors without names who appear bathed in blue light through doors thrown open by cold winds. We long thought they had been laid off after statewide budget cuts, but apparently they cannot ever leave this building. They are of course a part of the building, which is itself a living creature. Obviously.

  Night Vale has been saved after the janitors simply unplugged the computer. They say to rob a computer of electricity is very similar to killing a creature. But then again, who are “They”? When did they say that, and why? It doesn’t even seem true.

  I am alone here in the gym, listeners. But there is one other—a single adult man’s hand is slipping sadly down from the keys of a darkened computer. She scurries a little slower than before. Maybe her knuckles slump as she makes her way home through quiet streets.

  The whir and beep of machinery is slowly replaced with the familiar sounds of wind in the leaves. We are serenaded by the playing of crickets under the porch. We are lulled in our beds by the muscular contraction of the coiled earthbowel that fills our cellars. And with that, gentle listener, normalcy returns to Night Vale.

  We are no longer prisoners of electricity, except for the man we keep in the cage of electricity at the zoo, and we have no choice about that. If we let him out, he might tell somebody.

  Everything is well again.

  Well, everything is almost well again. I know computers are dangerous and have long threatened our lives and our freedoms. Listen, I was just imprisoned by this headstrong machine. I should know. But hear me Night Vale (and specifically those with any power in the School Board). Night Vale, there is a girl in need. There is a girl who only has a grown man’s detached hand as a body. I cannot relate to her experience. I doubt you can either, listeners. But we can all empathize.

  Sure, by allowing this computer to live on, we risk a digital tyrant, controlling our communication, our infrastructure, our lives. But destruction of our economy is an inconvenience. It is not an end. It is not a death. There are children in wheelchairs who can’t get a simple ramp at a charter school because our School Board lives in terror of a menacing, unforgiving glow cloud that rains dead animals and spreads dreadful and false memories. Likewise, there is a girl who is only a hand, and she needs a computer to help her be part of our community. And if allowing a treacherous machine to dismantle our municipal power grid and telephone lines and satellites and radios can help her, well, count me in.

  Thank you for listening to others. Thank you for caring for others. Stay tuned next for a predetermined series of unchangeable events that will shape the rest of your scripted life.

  Good night, Night Vale. Good Night.

  PROVERB: Thank you for your interest in a life free of pain. We’re not accepting applications at this time. Please try again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

  EPISODE 35:

  “LAZY DAY”

  NOVEMBER 15, 2013<
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  READING BACK THROUGH THIS EPISODE, WELL, THERE’S JUST A LOT OF POETRY in it, isn’t there? The warning from the vague yet menacing government agency. The traffic section. The language of much of the main plot itself.

  Jeffrey and I have always been big fans of poetry, especially performance poetry, and the format of Night Vale allows us to work in as much or as little of it as we want. In this case, clearly, I wanted to work in a great deal.

  Quietly in the background of all this playing around with language, there is plot starting to go to work. We had never had much of a serial plot on Night Vale before this point, but seeds were being planted for what would end up being our most tightly plotted arc yet, and even elements that would return in stories years down the line. The slow advancement of Strex, the tenure of Intern Maureen, Tamika and her army.

  Plot in Night Vale generally runs quite slowly, due to the nature of it being a two-man writing operation that is planned out in real time. We’re interested in watching the rhythms of the town, rather than pushing toward the next cliffhanger. But still, we are telling stories as we go. And we started to experiment here with the idea of telling a single yearlong story and seeing if it would work.

  —Joseph Fink

  No one has seen the trees this week. Hopefully they’ll come back soon.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  Hello, listeners. Nothing much to say about this day in Night Vale. Today is just a lazy day in our beautiful little town.

  The heat is unusually strong for this time of year, assuming you believe in concepts like “time” and “year” and “unusual.” Flies are buzzing around and around a trash can somewhere. Frances Donaldson, manager of the Antiques Mall, is waving listlessly at a wall of old items ready to be bought anew, her hand a slow signal of submission to inactivity. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is finding herself clicking to the same apiology websites she’s read a million times. I myself am slumped against this desk, murmuring into this microphone, too tired by the heat to give more than a token effort to the work of my life.

  Ours is a quiet now. No one is speaking but me. If speaking took me any energy, if it were not merely a reflex of my living form, then I myself would not be speaking either.

  Carlos, perfectly imperfect Carlos, is the only one feeling industrious today. He’s mowing the lawn and whistling. The lawn is whistling back.

  And now the news, I guess.

  Alert citizens from all over Night Vale are reporting a man in a tan jacket standing behind the Taco Bell, near the Dumpster and the constantly ringing pay phone. He is plucking insects out of the air and stuffing them into his deerskin suitcase. Alert citizens report that they don’t remember what his nimble hands look like, and many of them lost track of what they were saying mid-sentence, lapsing into a gaped-mouth silence. All of them received one stamp on their Alert Citizen Card. As always, five stamps means stop sign immunity for a year!

  Also, congratulations to Jake Garcia, who has completely filled up THREE Alert Citizen Cards, thus giving him the mandatory right to disappear forever. His entire family, in a statement given in monotone unison, said that they were proud and that they didn’t miss him much, really. Remember what Secret Police mascot Barks Ennui always says: “Citizens, be alert! But not too alert! There is much that you should not see! Only you can prevent your own house mysteriously catching on fire. Woof! Woof!” Haha, I bet Barks is such a cute little cartoon dog. Maybe someday the Secret Police will declassify what he looks like.

  Update on the Summer Reading Program from a couple months ago: Those children who made it out of the library alive—bloodied, covered in the guts of librarians, and clutching reading lists far in advance of their grade level—have formed an organized militia under the leadership of fellow survivor, twelve-year-old Tamika Flynn. They have taken to conducting drills out in the Sandwastes, hundreds of children, shouting and moving in unison, as Tamika stands over them on a hilltop, watching for their weakness, encouraging their strength. Tamika has taken to wearing the detached hand of a librarian around her neck, as a warning to any who would dare face her that she has already defeated the most fearsome creature imaginable. When reached for comment, Tamika said: “We do not look around. We do not look inside. We do not sleep. Our god is not a smiling god. And we are ready for this war.”

  When asked to clarify, she challenged our reporter to a hundred days of hand-to-hand combat, which our reporter declined by running away screaming, pursued by hundreds of battle-hardened children.

  It’s still just a lazy day here in Night Vale. Mayor Pamela Winchell called a press conference, and then did not speak. She sat on a folding chair next to the podium, her head lolled back, taking a brief nap, before getting up and jumping, folding chair in hand, through a small glowing portal she created in midair. All of this would have been quite rude to the attending reporters if a single one of them had actually attended, but they called a press conference of their own to announce that they just were going to take the rest of the day off, if that was okay. That the still afternoon sunlight was somehow more conducive to a gentle rest than the dark cradle of night. No one showed up to that press conference either.

  Carlos has vacuumed his living room and is now organizing his closets. He’s holding up items and making decisions. He is humming. The grass cannot hum, and so is silent.

  The vague yet menacing government agency would like to remind you that UFOs are totally not a thing. They remind you that UFOs are merely weather balloons, and further, that weather balloons are merely misplaced clouds, that clouds are merely dreams that have escaped our sleep, that sleep is merely a practice for death, that death is merely another facet of our world, no different from, say, sand or bicycles, and that the great glowing earth is merely the last thoughts of a dying man, laughing and shaking his head weakly at the improbability of it all. Remember, it’s not just the law. It’s an illusion.

  Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and you know what that means! It means it’s time for us to go groveling to the Brown Stone Spire, thanking it for all that it has done and all that it has mercifully not done. This is just a great time to get the family together, eat your fill, then crawl out through the sharp rocks and sand until your knees leave blood streaks on the barren earth, and you feel the Brown Stone Spire loom up before you but you dare not look, you dare not look.

  “Thank you,” you whisper. “Thank you. Thank you.” More plea than prayer. More fear than gratitude. And if it accepts what you have to say, you and your family can return to your homes, shaking, safe, together, shaking, together. And if it does not accept what you say? It doesn’t really matter what happens after that, does it? I mean, would knowing make it any easier? No. Knowing never does.

  The Brown Stone Spire: Give thanks. Cry out thanks. Scream thanks.

  And now for a word from our sponsors.

  Today’s broadcast is brought to you by CostCo: How much could a body even weigh?

  In addition, today’s broadcast is brought to you by waves of sound that are somehow carried by a form of light and that a machine is turning into an invisible man talking to you, intimately, quietly, into your ear. That doesn’t seem natural to us. Strexcorp Synergists, Inc. Distrust all that you previously trusted.

  This day in which nothing happens continues to not.

  Even bodily functions are taking the day off. Reports are coming in that hearts are failing to beat, lungs failing to inflate, the muscles of the arms and legs turning to a loose, relaxed jelly. People are falling dead in the street, suddenly blue, suddenly seizing, spit dribbling from their lips in tiny pools of foam and mud in the sand. Loved ones, looking on, without the energy needed to weep. Just nothing much of any kind going on. A lazy, lazy day.

  Our favorite local cereal company, Flakey O’s, is gearing up to announce their newest big product: Imaginary Corn Flakes. The cereal chefs down at Flakey O’s are taking only the sweetest, most noncarcinogenic cobs of imaginary corn, supplied by John Pet
ers, you know, the farmer? They are distilling that imaginary taste down to a crisp, flavor-packed imaginary corn flake, ready for you to eat out of a big bowl of milk. “We are very excited about this product,” said Miranda Yesby, of the new Flakey O’s board of directors. “We are thrilled to be working with John Peters, you know, the farmer? I mean, as soon as we can find him. Has anyone seen him? He’s become as hard to locate as his corn.”

  Miranda also said that there are no plans to do viral marketing involving a sentient, transdimensional pyramid, as the costs on the last one were just too high. “I mean we had nothing to do with that,” she said. “But if we did, then we might say a certain sentient pyramid really got an outsized ego after one simple viral marketing campaign and started making unreasonable demands, like a transdimensional trailer on location that is normal size on the outside but contains within it vast, looming spaces, impossible, endless. Also health benefits. So if that were the case, we would probably have had to let the sentient pyramid go.”

  Miranda then thanked us for attending the announcement, and dug her way back into the Flakey O’s offices using her large, clawlike paws.

  And now traffic. A few drops of icemelt. Almost invisible as they slide down great slabs of mountain rock. Joining together into a slight trickle, the mere suggestion of movement and water. That suggestion becoming more clear, clear water, clearly moving in a clear trickle downwards forming with others into a stream. A stream rolling over pebbles and around debris, hardly any force behind it but implacable in its searching out of lower ground. And then gasping from some height as a splash into a river. A deep river, churning its way through a landscape, drawing boundaries over which wars can later be fought. Slamming against boulders with violence but without malice. Becoming wider, slower, like a human settling into the better part of age, a river that only shows evidence of movement when it carries some other thing, some life, upon it, like a human settling into the better part of age. And finally, one last exit, a great engulfing by an ocean, in which all water is the same water. In which we can finally find some rest. Like a human settling into the better. Like a human settling. This has been traffic.